


to the depth and breadth and height

by winglessdrake



Series: Seven Rungs Down [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ashen Romance, Caliginous Romance, Flushed Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 04:45:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winglessdrake/pseuds/winglessdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pity can spring from all sorts of strange sources. For lonely blueblood Karkat Vantas, his pity for Eridan Ampora began before they even met. (Written for the homesmut kinkmeme.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It feels as though you have always pitied Eridan Ampora.

Even before you knew his _name_ , you pitied him. Your neighbor, Sollux Captor, was a braggart in addition to being a criminal and a fool. He would often barge into your hive, sneering at your paintings and your movies – and you would thank the Mother Grub every time that you always kept your robots carefully concealed in the basement, never once, no matter how much you were tempted, bringing them upstairs – and recounting all the various petty torments he visited on his platonic rivals in the hacker community. Gradually a single name began to emerge from the endless narrative, repeated over and over with a corrupted condescension that had nothing to do with fondness and everything to do with contempt. For that alone you would have pitied this 'Eridan Ampora,' especially after Sollux repeated with twisted delight the shaky, half-formed declaration of caliginous longings he'd taunted Eridan into making. Hadn't your study of romance shown you what a tragedy it was, to long for another in any quadrant when they did nothing but spit in your face?

But there were so many more reasons than that to pity Eridan Ampora. He was a mutant, Sollux learned quickly and just as quickly passed on to you; though he hid the color of his blood behind anonymous grey, your neighbor had grown impatient with his sniveling denials and brutally torn the knowledge from his mind. It was red; not the rusty color that occupied the absolute lowest end of the hemospectrum, but a bright, candy shade that didn't even exist on the hemospectrum at all. By all rights such an affront to the natural order should have been culled immediately; Sollux could have easily done it himself, or at least reported Eridan to the Heir Apparent if he'd suddenly developed a squeamish streak, but you knew he wouldn't. He was enjoying himself too much; he kept Eridan as one might keep a glowbug in a jar, throwing it a few twigs every now and then to keep it alive, and tilting the jar this way and that just to make it flutter. It amused him to keep this secret from the princess, just as it amused him to shock you with detailed accounts of the humiliations he visited on his new toy. And as for you? Of course you would never tell; how could you risk anything that might lead to the demise of one you pitied so much?

In addition to being a mutant, he was also a weakling and a coward; he was so frightened of discovery and the culling that would surely follow that he dared not show his face to anyone, even his closest neighbors. Sollux claimed he had not set foot outside his hive in over a sweep, and you saw no more reason to doubt this piece of information that any other he had given you. But keeping himself isolated couldn't protect him forever; he would need quadrants, allies willing to overlook his defect for the sake of his companionship. Allies such as yourself, you thought, but never said, and you were always careful to mask your true feelings with irritated disinterest whenever Sollux spoke of him.

The irritation, at least, was not difficult to feign; you hated hearing about the torments Sollux visited on him. The trick was maintaining your mask of disinterest; the redder your feelings grew, the more Eridan's suffering angered you, until you longed to simply reach out and tear Sollux's head from his shoulders just to make it _stop_. But you refrained; you knew Eridan would never thank you for killing the man he wanted to make his kismesis, no matter how outmatched he was. The final entry on his long list of faults: he had a stubborn streak, which kept him tirelessly throwing himself at a chosen goal until either he succeeded, or an outside force intervened.

You sometimes pictured yourself as that outside force; you imagined playing the auspistice, seamlessly inserting yourself into their troubled quadrant and calming them both. You would first convince Sollux to even the playing field; he would gain more amusement from beating Eridan if he did it fairly, without resorting to manipul8ion to get the result he wanted, and you would count yourself fortunate all the while that he couldn't read _your_ mind, for playing at ashen romance was exactly what you would be doing. A real auspistice would then nurture Eridan's self-confidence, help him plan a decisive strike that would catch Sollux's interest and fan the flames of a one-sided caliginous romance in they burst into a mutual conflagration. But that had never been your intention, no; were this to really take place, you would instead sooth Eridan further, discourage him from any action that might impress or anger Sollux, and firmly squash any misguided attempts to avenge his shattered dignity. Sollux would loose interest quickly, once his toy ceased to amuse; you were confident he would soon seek out other amusements, and when that happened you would make a move of your own.

You would begin by offering Eridan comfort; of course he would be upset to lose the eye of someone he was so black for. You would pretend sympathy, and sooth him, and suggest distractions to keep his mind from turning to Sollux once again. It would only be by sheerest coincidence that these distractions would fall in line with your own interests, of course, and that the two of you would grow ever closer, slowly unveiling your faults to each other in an intricate dance that you felt quite sure that he, in his awkwardness, would never recognize as a red courtship until it was too late.

You wondered, briefly, if you should tell him everything you already knew about him, through Sollux. It might help your case, make him more willing to trust you earlier; what reason would he have to fear you, if you already knew all his darkest secrets and pitied him anyway? But on the other hand, his first reaction to the news would almost certainly be panic, and there was no telling what someone with such a nervous disposition might do then. Perhaps it would be better to keep silent after all; you could always tell him later. First you would confess your feelings – no, better yet, first you would lead _him_ into confessing to _you_. He could not help but overflow with gratitude for all the consideration you'd shown him; even after his rivalry with Sollux faded, and your assistance was no longer required, still you had remained, and he had no idea how he would have gotten through such a dark time without you. He would thank you profusely, and then shyly, tentatively, as though worried he was on the brink of permanently upsetting a delicate balance, reveal that his feelings for you were neither ashen nor platonic. They were red, as red as his blood, and he would tremble in fearful anticipation of your offended wrath.

But of course you could never be angry with him! You would rush to sooth his fears; your relief at hearing those words from his lips would be entirely unfeigned. Assuming of course that the two of you had grown close enough by then to risk physical proximity; best to skim over that minor detail for now.

How would he react, you wondered, when you revealed that you shared his feelings? Happiness, surely; who wouldn't be overjoyed to find their romantic feelings for another reciprocated in kind? Relief, without a doubt: both at the realization that you weren't offended by his advances, and perhaps at the thought that you could use your lofty social position to protect him far better than he could himself, which surely would have occurred him at some point during your interactions with each other. And protect him you would; you'd guard him, and coddle him, and never let him come to any harm. Of course there were certain risks he could not avoid taking; the society you both lived in would never allow otherwise. But you would be there to guide and comfort him through any hardship he faced. Perhaps in time he would even allow you to choose a new kismesis for him, one better suited to his meager strengths…

But it was only a foolish fantasy. You'd built a castle in the air out of your hopes and dreams, and without the solid bedrock of reality to hold it up it could do nothing but melt away. Sollux would never accept you as an auspistice; respect was required to make an ashen romance work, and he didn't need to read your mind to know the blatant disrespect he held for you was wholeheartedly reciprocated. And that was assuming he would even think the idea worth considering: doubtful; he would sooner laugh in your face than even think of amending a situation he could derive so much amusement from. And Eridan…He didn't even know you. What would he think of you, once an acquaintanceship had been made? Would he pity you for your similarities, or, as was far more likely, loathe you for your differences? For the sake of your dignity, you pretended ignorance of the contemptuous opinion your acquaintances held for you; but it was only pretending. They just didn't understand you, that was all; hardly anybody did, and you thought you were used to it. But if Eridan were to join their number…how could you bear it?

You couldn't even bear to entertain the thought of rejection. You'd taken care to mention your feelings to nobody, not even your moirail; it was easy to maintain your silence now and save yourself the disappointment. Feferi may have picked up on the new depth to your moodiness, bless her, but she had worries of her own, and was far too grateful for your advice to push the issue. It really was better this way, you assured yourself over and over, silently hoping you could convince yourself it was true through sheer repetition. Surely Eridan did not need you so much as you'd led yourself to believe; he'd managed to take care of himself so far, and would surely continue to do so. And as for you…well, you supposed you would get over him in due time. Gradually, you even began to look forward to the time when you would find someone else to pity.

But once again, you proved yourself the fool. Just a brief glimpse, that was all it took; if you had blinked but a second earlier, you would have missed it completely. But once you caught that glimpse of Eridan's face, all your pretty fantasies and resolutions turned out to be nothing but insubstantial void after all.


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed that Sollux was capable of keeping some secrets close to the chest after all. Braggart that he was, you still knew nothing of the way he had betrayed the princess's trust until the very moment she enacted vengeance upon him. The explosion that destroyed his hive and killed his lusus shook the entire lawnring, and for a time you were far too worried about the possible collapse of your own home to even consider investigating. But investigate you did, eventually; you may have platonically loathed him, but he was still your neighbor and caste-brother, and you had to make sure whatever had destroyed him wouldn't come for you next.

But your investigation proved fruitless; there was simply too little left of his hive to support any explanation, beyond the half-formed theory that the explosion _might_ have centered on the room where he kept his mainframe hives. You turned to your mutual acquaintances for an explanation, but it wasn't until you summoned your courage and asked Princess Pyrope directly that you got the whole story. You'd known that they had a pact to keep both their respective lusii fed, and that his part of it had been using his hacker expertise to identify criminals for the princess to convict – but what you hadn't known, what _nobody_ had known, was that he had in fact been framing innocents. Worst yet, he'd had the audacity to attack one of the princess's highblooded companions, as well as two of the lowbloods she'd asked to assist her in investigating Sollux's treachery. The princess's vengeance – pardon me, _justice_ \-- had been swift and terrible, though she refused to explain the actual method by which she had blown up Sollux's hive. Of course you refrained from pressing her for further details; the very idea would have been improper to the extreme.

Your curiosity as sated as you suspected it would ever be, your thoughts returned once more to Eridan. You could only imagine how this sudden loss would hurt him, for – and how you now cursed your cowardice! – you had no way of contacting him directly. Sollux had never bothered to tell you what name his favorite victim used on Trollian, and you, unwilling to give yourself away, had never asked. You weren't sure how to go about making inquiries now without making the reason behind your interest public knowledge, something that would have been almost as bad as Sollux finding out in the first place. Just imagining the scandal and mockery that would inevitably ensue made your jaw clench with humiliation; and once he saw how others treated you, how could Eridan see your advances as anything other than an object of contempt? You could do nothing but wait, and hope troll serendipity would find a way to bring the two of you together -- for by now you had given up on your feelings ever fading – but when it did exactly that, you were caught completely unprepared.

It was less than a perigee after Sollux's death. You had grown weary of working on your robots – it seemed an exercise more pointless than ever in those days, when no matter what you tried, you seemed completely incapable of building anything that wouldn't quickly break – and were watching the moons through one of the upper windows of your hive. Was the pink moon really brighter than normal that night, or was it just your imagination playing tricks with your memory, trying to make that night even more special than it already was? In any case, a different light soon caught your eye: a small yellow one, hovering close to the ground, and slowly approaching the ruins of Sollux's hive. Having nothing better to do, you decided to investigate.

The light had disappeared into the ruins by the time you reached that side of the plateau; you cautiously followed its trail, wondering what it could be. The ruins had been long since picked over by scavengers, both troll and beast; was this someone under the misguided impression that they might yet find something useful, or something more sinister?

You were shaken from these questions by a faint sound, one that you failed to recognize as weeping until after you peered around the corner of a broken wall and saw a shape, small and hunched over but obviously trollish, kneeling on the ground by a small lantern. You couldn't tell anything about it from your vantage point, not even its gender, but it was crying hard enough to make its whole body shake, despite the obvious effort it was making to remain quiet and still. You tried to sneak closer, wanting more information before revealing yourself – and were startled by the sudden rasp of chitin on stone. A large crab lusus, its milky white shell glowing pink and green in the moonlight, suddenly reared up onto its hind legs, clacking its claws and growling in warning. The other troll suddenly whirled on you, snatching up a weapon you'd failed to notice before – but that wasn't what shocked you into stillness.

"Who's there?" the other troll called out in an unsteady voice, bracing an obviously homemade rifle against his shoulder. You noticed these things, of course, but they weren't where your attention truly lay. On his face – for now that you had heard him speak, you could tell quite clearly that he was male – on his face lay streaks left by the tears he had just shed, glistening slightly in the light cast by the lantern.

They were bright, candy red.

Your breath – or perhaps it was really your heart – was lodged in your throat, strangling you into silence. It was just as well, for whatever words you might have liked to say had fled your mind, leaving only a sort of roaring silence, an empty void with you at its center, able to do nothing but crouch in the shadows and drink in the sight of him. You scarcely needed to check the sign emblazoned on his chest, though of course you did anyway, just to be sure; but there could hardly be two trolls with such a glaring mutation.

It was Eridan.

You couldn't believe your eyes; Sollux had said, on several occasions, that Eridan hadn't left his hive in sweeps, that he hadn't even spoken to the trolls that shared his lawnring in all that time. He was simply too terrified of discovery to risk it…So what was he doing here, so far away from his home? What reservoirs of courage had it taken to make such a journey, difficult for even a normal troll, and from where had he drawn it? He was supposed to be a coward, timid and fearful; the idea that he could have hidden depths of this sort, concealed even from Sollux, shook your mind to its foundations. All your plans to protect him suddenly seemed laughable, contemptible even.

And yet…he was not entirely sure of himself, not entirely without vulnerability. The rifle shook in his hands; his lips were drawn back from his dull, lowblooded teeth in a rictus of fear. You didn't know what to do; should you rush out to comfort him, and risk being shot by this strange, reckless version of the troll you'd thought you pitied, or remain where you were, and wait for him to relax his guard?

In the event, your own indecisiveness made the decision for you. You remained in place as Eridan demanded you show yourself a second time, slowly backing away all the while, and could only watch helplessly as he gathered up the lantern, still watching for a sign of movement from you all the while, and threw himself across his lusus's back. It was only when they began a hasty retreat that you finally found your voice once more. "Don't go," you pleaded, but with only a strangled ghost of your normal husky growl; though Eridan gave the shadows in which you hid a final, fearful glance over his shoulder, he seemed not to hear.

You could have killed yourself in that moment, and in the moments and hours and nights that followed. You found yourself replaying the encounter over and over in your head, willing the memory of yourself to say _something_ , anything, just establish some kind of connection that could have been used as the foundation for something more – but you'd given yourself nothing. You were just as badly off as you were before, with no way to contact him – but worse, far worse now, for now you knew what he looked like, and you knew there was more to him than Sollux had even guessed at. He could not possibly have known about this other side to Eridan; he had to have seen only the qualities that made him pitiful, and chosen instead to make them objects of contempt. How could Sollux possibly have known of such depths of black devotion, only to turn them inside? Just contemplating such a waste made me clench your fists and rage, and utterly shatter the robot you'd been working on.

It had Eridan's face.

You couldn't get his image out of your head; it lingered, like the scent of blood after a dream bad enough to pierce through the sopor haze. You'd only laid eyes on him for perhaps a few minutes, if that; but to your engineer's eyes that had been plenty of time to trace every detail, every angle, every gentle curve. He had a delicate bone structure, and pale, thin skin; but despite these flaws he was inexpressibly lovely in your eyes. Of course you tried to reproduce the image, using the only canvas available to you. Of course it was futile; if you didn't destroy your own work in a moment of inattention, then it would in due time destroy itself in a conflagration of malfunction. But had you not known for sweeps that pity was, for you, an exercise in futility? Why should this be any different?

Still, building the robots helped, just as it always had. You spoke to the machines you had gifted with Eridan's face, just as you had spoken to others in the past. You held them, caressed them, kept them close by your side. But it was different this time, knowing there was someone out there with real skin, a real heart, not just metal facsimiles. You would look at these objects, these things you had created, and wonder if your memory was truly as accurate as you believed it to be. You spoke to them, and wondered what Eridan would say, if he were here to speak back. You had already misjudged him once; how were you to know if you did it again? How were you to know?

Building the robots helped, but not as much as you would have liked. But again Eridan surprised you.

You answered dismissively, scarcely paying attention to the brazen message flashing on your screen. But then you took a second look, and a cold, nervous sweat immediately began to trickle down your spine. Could it really have been him? The text was grey, there was no mistaking that, and you couldn't imagine why anyone other than him would wish to hide the color of their blood in such a way – but what reason could he possibly have to contact you?

There was a pause as he waited for your response; you couldn't think of a thing to say.

Was he panicking? The very thought broke your heart and shattered your shyness – at least in part.

You had to be sure of who you were talking to, before you could even consider saying more. The second question was also quite sincere, though you already begun to form a sneaking suspicion that you knew what the answer might be. 

Whatever it was you wanted him to do for you? Had there ever been a more loaded question? You highly doubted it.

The worst part was, you were…tempted. How could you not have been? You were only mortal, and he was so very pitiful – even if you did have to admire his bravery, confronting you like this. He'd obviously been thinking about this since the moment he escaped you; wondering who had seen him, what they would do about it, how much longer he had to live – and though you still wondered how he had found you, the flippancy of his words was only a thin cover for his obvious panic and desperation. With his life at stake, or so he thought, the odds were good he would do anything you asked of him. And was there really any need to tell him otherwise…?

Of course he didn't believe you, but you felt better for saying it. Had he always been this paranoid, you wondered, or was it a by-product of all the torments Sollux had visited on him? Either way, it didn't matter; while you may have entertained certain dishonorable thoughts in the past, there was a difference about thinking about such things and actually doing them – and when it came right down to it, you found you didn't want a relationship with Eridan that was built on false pretenses. Nothing good could come of it; either he would resent you now for forcing it on him, or he would resent your later once the full extent of your deceit became known.

And the truth would come out, wouldn't it? It always did in your favorite movies; thinking it over you actually felt a little ashamed of yourself for even thinking about lying to him at all. You'd have been no better than troll Dominic West, lying about his military experience so as to win the respect of his subordinates and the red affection of troll Julia Roberts. And that had worked out _so_ well for him in the end, hadn't it? Troll Julia Roberts had refused to even give him the satisfaction of waxing black for him; instead she had resigned her position on the ship where they had met, transferring to a distant part of the fleet and leaving him to deal with the fall-out of his shattered reputation. And it had served him right, too.

Of course, this still left you with an increasingly angry mutant to deal with. At least there was nothing he could actually do to you while you thought things over and tried to come up with an explanation for your behavior that he would actually _believe_ – wasn't there?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that

It turned out there was a great deal he could do to you.

Sollux had spoken a great deal on the subject of Eridan's faults; his mutation, his cowardice, the laughable ease with which Sollux could seize control of his mind – but, as your thoughts hearkened back to those hundreds of infuriating, one-sided conversations, you suddenly realized that for a man so intensely proud of his coding and hacking abilities, Sollux had spoken very little on the subject of Eridan's own skills in those fields. You should have noticed such negligence, juxtaposed as it was with Sollux's pride and fierce denials that Eridan could ever be even remotely considered his rival – though he would try to soften the latter with mocking declarations of pale intent. Could it have been that Eridan actually was Sollux's rival after all, at least in terms of basic technical skill?

It was a possibility that seemed more and more likely as the weeks went by. He'd refused to believe both your claims of ignorance and your declaration that you had no desire to blackmail him, the latter of which you had offered in a desperate attempt to stop the invasion of your privacy he had launched once the former excuse had grown thin. It quickly grew obvious, the method by which he had found you in the first place; he'd hacked the imperial database, searching first for Sollux's records and then for the ones belonging to his neighbors, and now he had hacked your own machines.

He got into everything, beginning with the various accounts you kept on certain public forums related to your interests, and working gradually inward, until you scarcely dared enter your workroom for fear of meeting Eridan’s suspicious gaze through the glass eyes of one of your robots. They weren’t even hooked up to the ‘net – but the computer you used to write their programming was. The one thing he didn’t find – and thank heavens for this small mercy – was the plans for the robot you had meant to resemble him, for you had never set any to paper, digital or otherwise, and you destroyed every scrap of the prototype as soon as you realized what was happening.

It was easy to track his progress, as he forced his way ever more deeply into your personal life. He never tried to keep it a secret; just the opposite in fact. Every new piece of information he gained on you, every embarrassing comment you’d ever regretted, every humiliating secret you’d reluctantly committed to one of your hard drives, believing no one would ever see it – he found them all, just to throw them all back in your face. He called you every synonym for reprehensible there was, mixed with language so course that just attempting to parse it made you break out in a sweat. At times it almost seemed as though he were DARING you to turn him in, as though he had grown weary of his lowly vigil against the entirety of the world and wished to make an end of it. It broke your heart, even as the invasion frightened and sickened you. And then, quite suddenly, it stopped.

Eridan offered no explanation for his behavior; indeed, he only rarely deigned to communicate with you at all. But from the tone of those rare communications, you gathered that he felt he had enough dirt on you to assure mutual destruction, if it came to that. But since of course there was no way you would ever turn him in, the reality of the situation was that he now had the option of utterly destroying you, whenever the mood struck him. And he had no idea.

****

You truly didn’t understand; Aradia’s deeply flushed pity for Vriska had always been blatantly obvious to you, though never more so than recently. It felt as though ever since she’d approached you with her special request, she’d done little more than talk to you about Vriska; her fears for Vriska’s safety, her hope that the plan would work out smoothly, her dreams for the future. Specifically flushed activities might have been conspicuously absent from those plans, but there was only so many times you could read about someone’s ideas for the joint world-looting enterprise they were going to form with the partner whose life they had saved before reaching certain conclusions.

 For that was precisely what Aradia wanted this robot for; if she wasn’t exactly saving Vriska’s literal _life_ , she was nevertheless saving her sanity, which in your culture was quite possibly even more important. Part of you still had trouble believing what had happened, despite the time you’d spent talking to Vriska yourself and confirming the things Aradia had told you. Preposterous as it seemed, death had not been the end of Sollux Captor. He’d taken to haunting Vriska, taking advantage of her ability to speak with the dead to ceaselessly pester and browbeat her into doing his bidding, and drawing on his own seemingly inexhaustible store of bloody-minded stubbornness in order to return whenever she tried to banish him into oblivion. On a handful of occasions he’d apparently even managed to possess Vriska completely, taking over her body and sending her on wild honkbeast chases into the wilderness. Aradia seemed to feel there was something important about these trips that she hadn’t seen fit to share with you, but it scarcely mattered. Once your robot was finally complete Sollux would no longer be her or Vriska’s problem.

Of course, once trapped inside the robot handling him would become _your_ responsibility, but as far as you were concerned it would be entirely worth it. Despite what Aradia seemed to think, you weren’t doing this for altruistic reasons. Eridan’s outward hostility might have slowly lessened, but he remained as suspicious of you as ever, and you had yet to find a good moment to confess your feelings. What could possibly make a better gesture of goodwill than returning his dead kismesis to him? And this time, Sollux would be under YOUR control; you would be there to stop him if he tried to take the black romance too far.

...Of course, such actions came uncomfortably close to auspistization, in an ironic echo of one of the many outlandish schemes you’d concocted what now seemed like so long ago...But you were sure that, once he knew of your feelings and had found it in his vascular pump to reciprocate them, the two of you would work something out. And finally being allowed to give into your longings and pity him, and be pitied in return...Oh. That would make anything worth it.

You had yet to build a robot that _hadn't_ exploded sooner or later. But this one would be the first, you were certain of it. Too much depended on it for it simply explode at some artistically convenient moment.

You stood up from your computer chair – but it was already too late. A cold metal hand clamped down on your shoulder, pushing you back down, and in the reflection of the monitor you saw two contemptible, mechanical eyes looking back at you, flanked by that superior smirk you had once longed to wipe off a different face.

“Thanks, Vantas,” Captor sneered. His grip on your shoulder tightened; you swallowed a surprised gasp of pain, leaving yourself open for the involuntary shiver when he leaned closer, close enough that you fancied you could feel the cold metal of the robot pulling heat from the back of your neck. “Now,” he purred, “how about we play a little game?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, Aradia is a jade blood in this AU, while Vriska is maroon.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS NOT THE FINAL CHAPTER, GUYS! There are going to be at least two more after this. So please don't kill me. ^^;
> 
> For reference, Feferi has green blood, while Terezi is tyrian purple.

It feels as though you have always pitied Eridan Ampora – and now, at last, you have the chance to prove it.

Captor had caught you completely off-guard, knocking you unconscious before you had the chance to get your wits together and even try to resist him – and when you’d woken up, a message from Eridan had been waiting, with a file and a set of instructions. Hours would pass before anyone put the pieces together and realized that all four of you had been played; yourself, Aradia, Vriska – and Eridan. Vriska had been the one who found the ancient frog temple, and took pictures of the runes she discovered inside, but Captor was the one who forced her to pass them on to Eridan, who would go on to use them to write the code for the game you all found yourselves trapped into playing. Meanwhile Sollux had once again stolen Vriska’s will, and forced her to plant the seed of an idea in Aradia’s mind – an idea which she had then perfected and taken to you, and you of course had played your part perfectly. Captor was free to do as he willed now – and the entire planet was going to pay the price.

While you, browbeaten and defeated, following Eridan’s instructions and entered the Medium as Captor’s client player, Aradia and Vriska were holding a hurried conference. They decided to take the problem to Kanaya Maryam, a seadweller who had once been Vriska’s friend, and she in turn brought the matter to Princess Pyrope’s attention. But by then Captor had already escaped Pyrope’s grasp, using the power he had over your life to threaten your moirail into cooperating and acting as his server player. Feferi turned to Tavros for help into the Medium, Tavros contacted Makara – and so it continued. Even Pyrope had no choice but to fall in line with Captor’s plan, sending first her own morail into the Medium, and then calling on you, as the first player in the chain, to assist her.

But you refused. It wasn’t easy – in fact it was the hardest thing you had ever done, to openly defy royalty like that – but you still refused.

All twelve of your friends and closest acquaintances had made it into the Medium – except for Pyrope and one other. Eridan was to be left behind; as far as Pyrope was concerned, he and Captor shared the blame for your race’s extinction in equal measure, and it would be only just to leave him to face the destruction he had wrought. Eridan protested, of course; he had not realized what he was doing, he’d thought it was just a game – but in truth, you wouldn’t have cared if he had known all along. You could not allow Pyrope to leave him behind, even if it did mean defying the princess and inviting her moirail’s wrath. But that could wait for later; you had another crisis to deal with.

You stand now on the roof of Captor’s rebuilt hive, the glow of the gates floating directly over your head. Before you lies spread the Land of Brains and Treasure – but your interest lies elsewhere. Feferi’s voice lilts into your ear through the portable computer you alchemized, assuring you that Captor broods over his success on one of the floors below your feet. He hasn’t even bothered to conceal himself, and why would he? Regardless of this game’s true purpose, he has perverted it into the means of taking revenge against the troll who killed him – and as he reaches into Eridan’s mind and prevents him from acting as Pyrope’s server player, he wants all who remain alive to know that he has won.

Or so he thinks.

You race down the stairs, trusting Feferi to steer you right, and burst into Captor’s old computer room, still full of the charred remains of his old hiveframes. He’s seated in the middle of the floor, hands pressed to his metal temples; an open husktop lay nearby, displaying the interior of your own hive, but such is his arrogance that he isn’t even facing it.

You don’t even give him the chance to look up, barreling straight into the center of the room and reaching for his head. One sharp twist, and it will all be over – but he bats one of your hands aside without even looking. The other hand bounces off the side of his head, leaving a deep but harmless dent. And then Captor turns, kicking your legs out from underneath you with a casual sweep of his leg, and you fall, landing on your back with another force to knock the breath out of you. Feferi shrieks in your ear; you wince and cut the sound before scrambling to your feet.

“I saw it coming, but I still don’t believe,” Captor says, likewise standing. “An arrogant blueblooded prick like you, defending a mutant? What’s your deal, Vantas?”

“None of your gosh-darned business,” you snap, falling into a loose approximation of a fighting stance and wishing you’d spent more time training. It’s too late now; you’re just have to hope your strength is enough to finish this. “Maybe I’m just doing what I should have done sweeps ago and putting you out of all our misery,” you add, not wanting him to pry any further.

Captor grins. “Yeah, that’d be a pretty nice feather in your cap, wouldn’t it? The princess might even forget the way you were mouthing off to her just now.” Unbelievably, he spreads his arms, leaving his guard completely open. “So do it then. Come at me, bro.”

It has to be a trap, but it’s also the best opportunity you’re likely to get. You throw yourself at Captor, launching a fist into the center of the chest you built with all your strength – and his lips part on a cry of pain as he rises off the floor and goes flying, hard enough to break through the opposite wall and disappear, his scream trailing behind him...And then drowned out by a sudden concussion that rocks the entire hive.

You rush to the hole in the wall, but can see nothing. Whatever was left of Sollux has fallen down into the abyss surrounding the mountain on which his hive rests, the scattered aerial brains fluttering madly through the disturbed air. You turn your portable computer back on and query Feferi.

Indeed you aren’t. You deploy your own husktop, connecting to Eridan’s computer – and are relieved to find him already in the middle of assisting Pyrope, apparently none the worse for wear. You immediately begin to deploy the necessary equipment – and find yourself interrupted by another message, this time from the very person you are trying to help.

Your palms feel clammy, the back of your neck damp with sweat. You find yourself wishing ruefully that you’d remembered to bring a towel with you.

This isn’t the reaction you’d expected – and as you minimize the chat window and take another look at the viewport, your horror grows.

He’s clutching the side of his head in pain, scarcely able to type. As you watch a convulsion wracks his body, nearly knocking him out of his grubstool. It’s only belatedly that you realize what must be happening – and your suspicions are confirmed an instant later.

Oh god. Oh no. Oh god.

This isn’t going at all how you expected. Eridan is still clutching his head in pain – when he tries to stand up, he staggers and has to clutch his desk for balance – and you’ve already deployed all the equipment he needs to enter the game. There’s nothing more you can do except watch as he makes his torturously slow, unsteady way to the alchemeter, the platform already littered with a collection of glowing, bright red objects whose purpose escapes you. But Eridan seems to know what they’re for; he drops to his knees in a manner far too sudden to be entirely planned, shoulders tense with pain as he picks up two of the objects and begins to fit them together.

The form of a rifle quickly begins to take shape, but time is running out; despite his obvious experience with the equipment his key is imitating, Eridan’s own body is working against him. You can see his hands shaking uncontrollably, making him drop pieces of the key repeatedly – you don’t dare look away, not even for an instant, even as your vascular pump leaps into your throat every time he fumbles. Every fiber of your being longs to be there beside him, _helping_ him – but there’s nothing you can do.

For a single instant, you dare to feel relief as the last piece of the key locks into place, and the viewport is filled with blinding light. Surely Eridan is safe now. You can stop worrying; while Princess Pyrope is undoubtedly angry, you know enough about this game by now to know that there is nothing she can truly do to either of you, not if she wants to win. You can turn your thoughts to more pleasant matters, such as winning this game – and perhaps even Eridan’s heart, in the bargain...

You’re a fool. You haven’t saved anyone – you were too slow, too late. Eridan is dead, and it’s all your fault.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a certain poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning. I really shouldn't be allowed to name my own works.


End file.
